Repairs

The Repair Department at Rainbow Guitars is the largest and best equipped shop in Southern Arizona. Our staff is comprised of two luthiers and two techs with combined experience of over 50 years building and repairing guitars, basses and all fretted instruments. We have an extremely strong commitment to customer satisfaction, and produce world-class results.

We are an authorized repair center for Martin, Fender, Taylor, Guild, Gretsch, Jackson, Charvel, Ovation, Tacoma and more. We offer full service on all fretted instruments, from restringing to neck resets. Check below for a sample of our services.

Restring:

This is a misnomer for what is involved. Our restring procedure is more like a minor set-up. We clean and lightly oil the fingerboard, polish the entire guitar, tighten and adjust tuning machines, check strap buttons, clean and lube the nut, smooth the saddle (Acoustic guitars) then install strings. After tuning-up we adjust the neck if necessary, clip the excess strings and re-tune.

Set-up:

Many players unnecessarily suffer from an instrument that is not adjusted properly, causing it to be hard to play or have annoying string buzz. Guitar set-ups are like a tune-up on a car; they should be done on a regular basis to keep your instrument in top playing condition. Once a year is usually sufficient, although necks may need to be adjusted more frequently due to humidity changes.

Our set-ups include the restringing procedure, cleaning all hardware, neck adjustment, minor fret work, setting bridge/saddle height, setting proper nut height, cleaning & lubricating electronics, setting intonation, and adjusting pick-ups. This results in an instrument that not only is comfortable to play, but sounds great as well.

Fret Dressing:

Fret dressing is a fine compliment to a set-up. Quite often frets are worn causing low spots that cause poor tone or buzzing , or are uneven which can cause buzzing or dead notes. We start a fret dress by seating and gluing any loose frets, followed by leveling all frets and removing any low or high spots. We then use a special crowning file to round the top of each fret, followed by smoothing them with progressively finer grits of sandpaper and steel wool until they are smooth and shiny like new.

Re-frets:

A re-fret is the best thing you can do to improve the playability and tone of your instrument. Even most new guitars do not match the quality of a good fret job. It’s like putting new high performance tires on your car after driving around on bald tires. A re-fret consists of carefully pulling the old frets, straightening the fingerboard while maintaining (or achieving) the proper radius, cleaning out the fret slots, installing the new frets, filing the ends and beveling them, followed by the leveling, crowning and smoothing procedure described above. The result is a straight fingerboard with well rounded frets that not only have great tone, but are a joy to play. All re-frets include a complete set-up.